NOTES FROM THE FIELD: PeopleSoft still in play, GOP mail goes astray

Distributors

Vendors

For a while I thought I'd hooked a live one. She had beauty, brains, and a body built by Ferrari. Things were going great for a while, until I found out she voted for the other guy. It was like somebody poured a dry-ice cocktail down my shorts. Next time, I think I'll just stick to safe topics like sex and religion.

My name is Larry and I'll be your server this evening: Oracle has sweetened its fifth and "final" offer for PeopleSoft to $US24 a share. That's kind of like dumping a packet of Equal into a cup of hemlock. We'll find out just how thirsty P-Soft's shareholders are on November 19, when the offer is set to expire.

The .com before the storm: It's moot by now, but hundreds of email missives intended for campaign muckety-mucks at georgewbush.com were mistakenly sent to mailboxes at georgewbush.org, an anti-Bush satire site. Messages included polling data and discussions of campaign tactics.

Even cagier: Two Excel files bearing the intriguing titles "Caging.xls" and "Caging-1.xls" - a hefty listing of names and addresses of registered voters in a largely Democratic area of Jacksonville, Florida. Hmm ... wonder what that was for?

Not so hot: Back in June, Hotmail announced it would start doling out 250MB of free email storage, but some Cringesters complain they're still stuck with puny 2MB accounts. A Hotmail spokesdroid claims they had hoped to finish rolling out the storage freebies by fall, but now they are shooting for year's end. Just think of it as a Christmas gift from Old St. Gates.

Cultural pluralism: Unfortunately, pointing out other people's gaffes forces me to own up to mine. In discussing the Swedish Girls of Gaming, I described them as "femme fatales". But the correct plural is "femmes fatales". (You'd think I'd know that, having dated a fair number of them.) Thanks to reader Ralph W. for watching my esses. Speaking of those seven "Swedish" femmes, weeks of in-depth investigative work have unveiled their dark secret: Two of them are actually Danish. I'm still trying to find out whether they're cherry or cheese.

Related Whitepapers

Copyright 2018 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of IDG Communications is prohibited.